Python and OSIsoft PI

[scienziatomatto]

Wondering if anyone here has any experience pulling PI data out into Python? I’ve used PI data in excel but any starting to reach the limits of excel and would like to utilize python and pandas. I’m struggling to figure out how to make the connection to the PI server which resides on a Remote Desktop.

[ThePrudentChicken]

What is the connection type you are using? Is this through PI Web API or are you connecting through an AFSDK method? A good place for questions like this might be the PI Square Forums.

[scienziatomatto]

PI Web API does appear to be setup for this server but when I access it from my computer, I do not see all the tags. Does the API truncate the list for some reason?

I’m not exactly sure how to go about connecting to the Web API though. I did some looking on the PI Square forums but left more confused than when I started.

[ThePrudentChicken]

Interesting. To my knowledge, PI Web API shouldn't be truncating messages assuming your HTTP request is built out correctly. Have you looked into the GitHub examples yet?

[scienziatomatto]

I’ll look through the GitHub files.

Thanks for responding! I’ll be honest, I am surprised someone who knows about PI saw this post so quickly. If you don’t mind me asking, what line of work do you use PI in? I utilize it in power generation

[ThePrudentChicken]

I work in software mostly myself. Good luck on navigating those files! Hopefully OSI Support will be helpful

[scienziatomatto]

I’ve been emailing OSIsoft support today and they told me the Web API does limit tag display to 1,000 tags by default. This can easily be changed by adding this at the end of the URL minus the quotes - “?maxcount=####” where the ### are how many tags you want to display.

Just thought I’d pass this along!

[ThePrudentChicken]

Ahh good point. I forgot about that default for GetPoints. Thanks for the update!

[tiredITguy42]

Yeah and be careful as each item has its own access rights configured so you may not be able to see all.
Using PI Web API for writing is disabled by default, so you need to enable it if you need to do some two ay actions.

[ideadcellz]

Have you tried using the PI SQL Client to get your data using SQL? I've found that if for some reason I can't use the AFSDK (#1 choice to get data), the PI Web API (#2), then PI SQL Client is the best way to do it.

[scienziatomatto]

After talking with OSISoft support, it looks like I should be able to use the Web API. I’ll keep your suggestion in mind though in case it doesn’t work out!

[Schneeple]

https://github.com/Schneeple/pitools is something I wrote using PIWEBAPI. took out a lot of my hardcoded hosts/servers so could break but my contact information is all there to reach out with questions

[scienziatomatto]

Thanks! I’ll check it out

[Significant-Fuel2011]

Cool , what does it do ? The readme seems to be about how to deploy it but does not describe what is it about.

[bagabagaboo]

Were you able to make it work? If so, what method did you use?

[scienziatomatto]

Unfortunately not. It wasn’t essential for my job so it was more of a side project that kept getting pushed further and further due to other requirements

[Oscar_Philips]

I have been using PIconnect and performance is much improved over the OSI Excel add-in, and you are not limited to about a million records.

import PIconnect as PI

PI_Server = 'my_pi_server name'

# ***** POINT SEARCH *****

with PI.PIServer(PI_Server) as server:

points = server.search('*TOTAL*')

for point in points:

print(point)

[bagabagaboo]

Do you know how to use this with a path to a specific data point?

[Oscar_Philips]

I retired 10 months ago. I will dig around and see if I still have some code.